Collaborative Project-Based Service Learning: What Motivates Students to Participate and What Do They Value After?*

Engineering design pedagogy has increasingly integrated project-based service learning (PBSL) across the curriculum for its promise of greater engagement of students, transfer of desirable skills, and improved student retention and persistence in STEM. However, little is understood about how student motivation for engaging in PBSL aligns with the actual perceived value that students derive from PBSL experiences. In this work, we examine three years of an engineering design course integrating a core PBSL element representing 70 participants and 17 projects, using a mixed-methods qualitative approach to ascertain student motivation, goals, and perceived value at four junctures before, during, immediately after, and 1–3 years after the PBSL experience. Our findings indicate that while students appear motivated to pursue PBSL experiences because of their desire to create positive impact, the sustained value they derive from PBSL experiences is primarily about career clarity and design process understanding. These results have important implications for how engineering educators present PBSL experiences to students, how they are positioned in a curriculum, and how they operate in conjunction with other efforts to promote retention and persistence in STEM.

Duke Scholars

Author Vivek Rao Engineering Graduate and Professional Programs